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The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

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Friday
Apr082011

The Commentariat -- April 9

The President's weekly address focuses on the budget compromise:

President Obama's statement on the budget agreement:

     ... See related stories under Friday's Ledes. ...

... Carrie Budoff Brown of Politico: President Obama's protestations to the contrary, anti-abortion measures did make it into the final budget deal: "did agree to ban the District of Columbia from using federal and local taxpayer funds on abortions — a move already being cheered by abortion opponents as a noteworthy victory. The deal also includes a guarantee that the Senate will vote on bill that would end federal funding for Planned Parenthood, according to a House Republican summary." ...

... Greg Sargent: "... for all the talk about conservatives wanting more out of this deal, the simple truth is that this battle was fought almost entirely on their terms. By agreeing to steep, if temporary, cuts in advance, Dems acceded to the GOP’s austerity/cut-cut-cut frame at the very outset, and the debate unfolded entirely on that rhetorical turf." ...

... Ezra Klein: "Boehner ... managed to get more from the Democrats than anyone had expected, sell his members on voting for a deal that wasn’t what many of them wanted and avert a shutdown. There is good reason to think that Boehner will be a much more formidable opponent for Obama than Gingrich was for Clinton." ...

... Brian Beutler of TPM: "This was a little fight. Puny even. It was the easiest test [Speaker Boehner will] face all year, and he barely passed. In just a few weeks, he'll have to convince the same petulant bloc in his party to support raising the debt limit, or force the country into default. When that's done, he'll have to run point on yet another spending fight -- to keep the government running next year.... That the focal point of policy on Capitol Hill is on what should be cut -- and not when to cut, or whether cutting is even wise -- illustrates just how brief the progressive moment lasted after Obama's election in 2008. It also represents a colossal failure of government." ...

... Bob Reich: "The right-wing bullies are emboldened. They will hold the nation hostage again and again.... The President continues to legitimize the Republican claim that too much government spending caused the economy to tank, and that by cutting back spending we’ll get the economy going again.... He is losing the war of ideas because he won’t tell the American public the truth: That we need more government spending now — not less — in order to get out of the gravitational pull of the Great Recession." ...

... Matthew Cooper of the National Journal: "The budget skirmish ends. The war begins." ...

What we have here is a flea, wagging a tail, wagging a dog. The flea are the minority of House Republicans who are hard right, the tail is the House Republican caucus, and the dog is the government. -- Chuck Schumer, in a Senate floor speech

Joe Nocera: the N.C.A.A. has a disturbing double standard: one for rich white men, one for poor black men. White UConn coach Jim Calhoun got "a slap on the wrist" -- which also allowed him to get an $87,500 bonus on top of his $2.3 million annual salary -- for "breaking the rules egregiously and repeatedly." But 19-year-old Perry Jones, who is black and who did nothing wrong -- when he was in high school and wiithout his knowledge his severely ill and poverty-striken mother borrowed (and repaid) money from a coach -- was suspended during the tournament and fined. The comments on Nocera's column are here.

Right Wing World *

Actually, I have great respect for [Gail] Collins in that she has survived so long with so little talent. Her storytelling ability and word usage (coming from me, who has written many bestsellers), is not at a very high level. -- Donald Trump, in a letter to the New York Times Editor

Gail Collins responds: Trump is "falling further and further into the land of the lunatic fringe." Comments on Collins' column are here.

In yesterday's Commentariat, we brought you Sen. Jon Kyl making a speech on the Senate floor in which he claimed that "well over 90 percent" of Planned Parenthood's services were dedicated to abortions:

     ... That figured turned out to be a little off. The figure is closer to three (yes, that's 3) percent, not 90 percent. Undeterred by calls to retract his remark, Kyl had a spokesperson send a note to CNN which read, in part, "...his remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, an organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does subsidize abortions":

     ... CW: See, it's okay if you tell out-and-out lies on the Senate floor, and it's okay if those lies go unchallenged into the Congressional Record. It's okay if you just make stuff up and fail to apologize, because facts are troublesome things that don't always fit a Senator's prejudices. What's important here is the illustration. On a related note, I had forgotten what an all-out misogynist Kyl was, but Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reminds us of Kyl's position on women's health issues, which he expressed during the debate over healthcare legislation. "I don't need maternity care":

* Where facts never intrude.

News Ledes

... "Tourist in Chief." New York Times: "Just hours after reaching a deal to avert a government shutdown, President Obama paid a brief visit to the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday — presumably to highlight that it, and other national monuments, were open for business." ...

... The Hill: "President Obama on Saturday signed a seven-day extension of government funding, which is the first part of a agreement to keep the government running through the end of the current fiscal year. The bill was signed without fanfare 13 hours after Democratic and Republican congressional leaders reached a last-minute deal Friday to avoid a government shutdown."

AP: "Demonstrators burned cars and barricaded themselves with barbed wire inside a central Cairo square demanding the resignation of the military's head after troops violently dispersed an overnight protest killing one and injuring 71. Hundreds of soldiers beat protesters with clubs and fired into the air in the pre-dawn raid on Cairo's central Tahrir Square in a sign of the rising tensions between Egypt's ruling military and protesters."

Al Jazeera: "Forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, have shelled rebel positions west of Ajdabiya. There are reports the town is on the brink of falling to Gaddafi troops, in a major setback for rebels who earlier in the day had pushed westward towards Brega. Our correspondents, citing reliable sources, said gun battles were taking place in the streets of Ajdabiya on Saturday." ...

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